AMD returns to the entry-level graphics card market again in a potentially big way with the $149 Radeon HD 6790, designed to take on the Nvidia GeForce GTX 550 Ti. That would place the HD 6790 in between the HD 6850 and HD 5770, with an 840/1050 MHz core/memory clock at stock and 1GB memory on a 256-bit memory bus, a larger memory bandwidth than expected from products in this lower price range. Yet with great power comes greater power requirements. Find out if the HD 6790 can bring DirectX11 gaming to the entry-level market in our review of AMD's latest Barts-based graphics card, which also includes benchmarks for Sapphire's HD 6790 offering

For most of us the AMD HD6990 is a pipe dream, the cost is very hard to justify. Let’s not forget that unless you are gaming at super high resolution or across multiple screens it is often not needed. With the recent release of nVidia’s GTX550 ti, AMD have decided to update their popular HD5770, with the new HD6790 targeting the £120 sector. Today we are looking at the custom Sapphire HD6790 model which features an enhanced heatpipe cooler and PCB design.

Overclocking the PowerColor 6790 was simple using either AMD Graphics Overdrive with maximum speeds of 950MHz core and 1250MHz memory or MSI Afterburner v2.1 with the clock limit unlocked in the MSI Afterburner.cfg file for higher capabilities. Software voltage modification isn't supported yet. Even so, I managed to game for a while at 1010MHz core and 1260MHz memory although the system would freeze randomly. Turning the settings down, I didn't achieve reliable stability until 1000MHz core and 1235MHz memory. The card may be able to operate stable over 1GHz but was bumped down to make sure it could pass through all of the testing. It was likely the memory which was the culprit but it still managed to overclock 185MHz over stock

AMD wanted a video card to fill in the price and performance gap between the Radeon HD 6850 and the Radeon HD 5770. The release of the Radeon HD 6790 graphics card at the $149.99 price point should fill that gap and give the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti a run for its money. Read on to see how the AMD Radeon HD 6790 compares to dozens of other cards and yes, we also overclock it and show you the thermals and power numbers!

In recent months, we've seen AMD and NVIDIA go back and forth with releases that are designed to one-up the other at the respective price-point, and with AMD's Radeon HD 6790, it doesn't look like this game will end anytime soon. Set to compete against the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, the HD 6790 launches with the same MSRP of $149.

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti finally has a direct rival from the AMD camp. Does the Radeon HD 6790 set a new performance and value milestone at $149, or are you still better off buying a slightly pricier and faster card?

If all those NDAs last month weren't already enough for everyone, we start the NDA run for April nice and early. With AMD having taken care of the high end segment with cards like the HD 6970 and HD 6990, while also taking care of that mid-range - high end segment with cards from the HD 6800 series, it was only a matter of time 'till we saw some more mid-range, cheaper cards hit the market.

Considering NVIDIA released the GTX 550 Ti last month and more mid-range models are rumored, it comes as no surprise that AMD are starting to release their line-up. The first comes in the form of the HD 6790. It's clear that the xx30 naming scheme didn't work for them in the past, so it seems they've decided to look at a 50, 70 and 90 line-up now.

With the release of NVIDIAs GTX 550 Ti at $150 a few weeks ago the market changed slightly and AMD had a new product to consider, today we see their response in the form of the 6790, our first 6700 series product and on our test bench is Sapphires version. We will be putting it up against the 550 Ti (as well as a few other products) in a selection of the latest games, media playback and GPU computing tests to establish how good the new Radeon is.

The Radeon HD 6790 1GB is a new $150 graphics cards based on the same Barts architecture found in the Radeon HD 6800-series of cards. Obviously there are fewer shader processors and lower clock speeds, though the 256-bit memory bus remains for better memory throughput. The goal is obvious: unseat the GTX 550 Ti (and the GTX 460) from NVIDIA as the best option for this price segment. Does it succeed?

When AMD and NVIDIA release a new batch of next-generation graphics processors, gaps typically form in their respective product stacks as the entire top-to-bottom line-up of new products is fleshed out over time. When new GPUs are introduced, they usually offer increased performance at a given price point, which drives the cost of comparable previous-generation products downward. Occasionally the supply and demand of both the new and old products will result in a larger than desired price disparity between the new parts and the older ones that still remain on the market. It's those large price disparities that are where product gaps show.

Such is the case with AMD's current product stack. At the top of the line-up, AMD has the Radeon HD 6900 and 6800 series parts, but the lower-end of the market is still covered by Radeon HD 5000 series parts. Disregarding the few remaining Radeon HD 5800 series parts that will eventually sell out, the $100 to $120-ish Radeon HD 5770 is currently the first step down from the $150 to $180-ish Radeon HD 6850. AMD aims to fill that relatively large price gap between those two models with the new card we'll be showing you here today, the Radeon HD 6790...

Today AMD is releasing their new Radeon HD 6790 which is targeted at the $150 segment that recently saw some love from NVIDIA in form of their GTX 550 Ti. AMD's new card uses the same GPU as the more powerful HD 6850 and HD 6870, so it will be interesting to see where it stands and whether it can defeat NVIDIA's latest offering.

We review the Radeon HD 6790, a card that is designed to compete with NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 550 Ti. The HD 6790 is based on AMD's 40 nm "Barts" GPU which is the very same graphics processor used in the Radeon HD 6850 and HD 6870. Next to that this product comes with a full 256-bit wide memory bus giving it very nice memory bandwidth, really aside from slicing some shader processor clusters and ROPs away, this is a R6800 series card.

All in all we think this is a lovely little mid-ranger for just 129 EUR, read the article right here

InsideHW.com has reviewed AMD Radeon HD 6790 graphics card. Here is a quote from this review:

Last month, NVIDIA nicely summed up this year&#146;s first quarter with GTX 550, which seemed like a great competitor against Radeon HD 5770. Everything would have been perfect for the Americans if AMD hadn’t already planned the counterattack for the very beginning of the second quarter, or to be precise, 5th April. The new Radeon is named HD 6790 and is somewhat of a modification, or a weakened version of, Radeons HD 6850/6870, based on the Barts GPU. As such, this model is based on the VLIW5 architecture, which is somewhat old and doesn’t belong to the truly high-class Radeons; all chips from the Cayman family are based on VLIW4 (Very Long Instruction Word). Besides, the Barts chip located in HD 6970 has been weakened in order to replace the already obsolete HD 5770...